Sunday, June 13, 2010

Falling in love

We started land hunt again. The project was put on hold last year when I was pregnant.

We saw this piece of hand, I felt in love with the scenery, but we are not getting it.

Imagine sipping a beer in the porch enjoying the picturesque landscape after a long day at work.

Unfortunately, it comes with many negative points. There is a power line passing through the land, right above where people are supposed to build the house as the remaining of the land is for agriculture purposes only. Plus, the countryside scenery is facing north so there is unlikely we will build a porch against the sunshine. The other issue that disturbs us is that this land is situated in a historical town so chances are we will have strict rules to follow when building the house.

4 comments:

Good luck on your hunt. This piece that you found was a lovely one, but there are plenty others fish in the sea and you will eventually find the right one (kinda sounds like the old search for love again, doesn't it ?)

With Vanessa we searched for more than 2 years before we found our place. I used to spend a lot of time watching online listings, guessing where in the area a property might be, driving around the area looking for lovely places, and for sale panels.Make that another year, fighting with banks and building rules (architectes des batiments de France) and we are now a couple weeks away from being delivered our house (of which i am constantly spamming pictures on facebook, so you can't have missed it :)).

During our search, we found this great field (link below). Stunning view with distant mountains and nearby pond (other link below). I instantly fell in love with it, but in the end we couldn't make it happen...

Yes I have been following the progress of your house, you must be eager to move in.

Went to the link and wow, you were looking at big pieces of land didn't you? In our case to have a big land like this we need to live further away from the city. One on hand I enjoy the countryside scenery but on the other hand I don't want to spend too much time commuting to/from work. Tough call to make a decision that would pleases both of us.

Will certainly need your advise in building the house once we find our land.

We were looking for pretty normal pieces of land : this one was just a dream. Most of the pieces in our area are 2500m² wide because that's the minimum allowed surface for a land without common sewage. Eventually, we chose a smaller (950m²) piece that is located within the "bourg" and thus has access to the village sewage network. Those facilities that we take for granted in urban areas are not so common in rural areas ^^.I understand your concern about commuting vs country. I have a daily 45mn trip to and from work. But Toulouse is a pretty big city (4th biggest in France) and you have to search pretty far for real countryside. The first 15km around the city itself are mostly endless residential areas.When we arrived in this region, 4 years ago, we looked for a house to rent in the countryside with a garden and the one in this remote village was the only one we could afford (~700€/month). After a couple of years, we have started to dig our hole (faire notre trou) here: get to know some parents from school, get involved in the community (sports and school associations), the girls have made a lot of friends, so we decided to stay here and build our home although it's still pretty far from work. I think that you will find that once the kid(s) go to school it is much harder to move. Much more things to give up. So better find the right place before ;)

As for giving you advice about building your house. I'll be glad to, but I think that there is really only one that is truly important : find a good contractor. One that cares and will guide you through your project. We have been lucky to find one and owe them a lot.

Thanks for your advise. In fact my FIL used to be a contractor and if everything goes as planned he would be our contractor and he will choose his team to work on the house. About the location, well, we are looking at South of Rennes and North of Nantes, but prices are quite discouraging for now...